Wikipedia:Village pump/November 2003 archive 1

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[edit] Right-justified intros

The first line of an article is right-justified, which can look very strange if the line is short (e.g. Richard Brinsley Sheridan). It can be fixed by putting a blank line above the first line of text, but is there any way the developers can fix it more effectively? -- sannse 10:50, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

As far as I can tell it's just a bug in IE 5.0/win. Upgrade your browser to IE 6 or Mozilla. --Brion 22:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Word and article searches

Am I the only one who has trouble doing word and article searches? Often it seems I search a word or phrase, looking for an article, and I come up blank two or three times. But if I persist, sometimes I come up with an article. What's up with that? It's not so urgent when checking for existing articles on, say, Penis-melting Zionist robot combs. But on more common subjects it's a problem. Also, when are we going to have full search capabilities? Paul Klenk 01:45, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Colon in link in definition list

A colon in a link in a definition list doesn't work. Can the software be changed to chnage the priority so that a : within [[ ]] doesn't start the second half of the definition entry. This is a problem with any of Wikipedia:... or User:...

This is a known bug, but no one cares enough to fix it, as definition lists are used slightly more often than never (though the colon is independently used for indentation, which happens to be implemented as definition-only definition lists). If you care enough to fix it, please be our guest. --Brion 07:34, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)
In the mean time, some adaptation of URL encoding might be useful: Wikipedia:Village pump —Paul A 01:40, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] How do I put a French link to my English version and vice versa?

In my "user page" : How do I mention the same page exists in both languages? Papotine 12:52, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Add [[fr:Utilisateur:Papotine]] (or whatever you login name is in the French wiki) to your English user page. Conversely, [[en:User:Papotine]] to the French one... -- Viajero 13:48, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Muchas gracias, Viajero ! Papotine 14:36, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Can't upload an image

After the screen asking if I want to change the " " in the filename to "_", I get this message:


A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "INSERT INTO image (img_name,img_size,img_timestamp,img_description,img_user,img_user_text) VALUES ('Keyboard_Layout_German.png',,'20031026192319','Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120, made by me', '7586', 'Cyp')" from within function "wfRecordUpload". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 20031026192319','Keyboard layout, German, upload attempt #120,".

I don't know anything about SQL, but is the character sequence ',,' appropriate? Κσυπ Cyp 19:28, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You were right about the ",,". The PNG file you uploaded had zero length, and for some reason the file size variable got set to an empty string instead of "0". I'll submit it to the bug tracker. -- Tim Starling 00:02, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)
Not just 0 length, it turns out, but also didn't even exist... Was trying to upload "Keyboard Layout German.png", when it was called "Keyboard_Layout_German.png" on my computer... Apparently Windows seems to think there is a difference between spaces and underscores, despite that Wikipedia knows there isn't... Managed to upload, at last... Κσυπ Cyp 01:24, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Double Voting on Vfd

I've noticed lately that there seems to be gaggle of brand new users who's only real edits seem to be to vote to keep things on Vfd. Earlier it was User:Wartortle and the dozen some of the dozen other names apparently created by User:Tester (see WP:PU). Now there seems to be User:Princess Toadstool, User:Macarenaman and User:Peter Farrell. It seems to me that the last three were created by 1 person with aims of keeping the page Dork, apparently created by User:Mwbassguy. I don't now if all these events are related, but I'm suspicious. Is there any way to check to see if double (or more) voting is occuring on Vfd. Maximus Rex 02:28, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)"

Logs were checked for roughly the last 14 hours. Princess Toadstool, Macarenaman, Panochik and David Stapleton were all using the same IP address. During that period, the only edits made from that IP were to VFD. The address is an AOL proxy. -- Tim Starling 02:49, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)
The David Stapleton thing may have just been a coincidence. The edits are overlapping, and nobody manually logged in at any stage. David Stapleton was using section editing, whereas PT was not. And I have an edit by Antonio Martin using the same proxy, the previous day. Time to publish, I think. User:Tim Starling/Log segment 1 -- Tim Starling 03:18, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)
Just to be clear: it is my opinion that neither David Stapleton nor Antonio Martin were responsible for creating these false identities. AOL has many more users than proxies. By chance, David Stapleton and Antonio Martin were using the same proxy as this Princess Toadstool and friends. -- Tim Starling 00:38, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Protecting Wikipedia

In some ways, this is a follow-up to the thread on "Wikipedia Needs an Editor." In particular, security was mentioned in passing, but I would like to make that the focus of attention, and to suggest that the Wikicommunity should adopt some measures in an effort to protect what has already been accomplished, and to help ensure that frustrated Wikipedians do not give up in despair.

Some Wikipedians seem to believe that things aren't so bad, so nothing needs to be done. I am not in a position to quantify how bad things are, but there are several indicators that the costs associated with protecting Wikipedia are already quite high. More to the point, the growing size and reputation of Wikipedia will make it an increasingly attractive target for vandals. I don't know if an automated attack been launched yet, but wouldn't it be better to try to avoid it?

What can be done? I am not a security expert, but it seems to me that one of the first steps that could be taken would be in the direction of ensuring that only suitably registered individuals can MODIFY pages created by others.

Security of course is not an absolute, but the history of the Internet yields too many examples of "nice ideas" being overtaken by vandalism in one form or another. The survival of the U.S. system of government can plausibly be attributed to the *pessimism* of the authors of the Constitution.

I think the idea of having the Wikipedia completely open is much more attractive than a semi-closed system to only registered users. (My 2c, in any case) Dysprosia 08:31, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I don't think vandalism is a big problem really, and requiring registration wouldn't solve much (the most persistent and bothersome vandals have no problem registered accounts anyway). The only real worry is that if it's not caught immediately from the recent changes page, some of it slips through and stays in Wikipedia for months, which leads to an overall lowered quality (I found an "president of my ass" or something similar inserted into some politician's article that had been there for about 3 weeks, for example). --Delirium 08:37, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

A quick response:

  The day is not yet done, but six cases of vandalism have already
  been dealt with today (Oct 28), and they all involve (anonymous) IP
  addresses.  Whoever is spending time on this could be spending time
  more wiki-usefully.
  • Please reflect on Gresham's Law ("Bad currency drives out good.")
  There's a Wikipedia under that name but better yet there is Aristophanes.
  In his play, The Frogs [405BC], he wrote:

The course our city runs is the same towards men and money. 
She has true and worthy sons.
She has fine new gold and ancient silver,
coins untouched with alloys, gold or silver, 
each well minted, tested each and ringing clear.
Yet we never use them!
Others pass from hand to hand,
sorry brass just struck last week and branded with a wretched brand. 
So with men we know for upright, blameless lives and noble names.
These we spurn for men of brass....

See the thread "We've lost another two..." above.

-- 1635, Oct 28, 2003 (EST)

Surprising to people outside wikipedia and interesting, vandalism has been controlled very well so far. It seems the truth is that there are more wise, sensitive people than more those who are interested in damging things. The more we have vandalist, actually the more and more we have gained good eye-bolws. The trouble most came from well-intention from knowledgable people--those who care a lot of their topics so that they run into conflicts. -- Taku 22:14, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

If Wikipedia became an attractive enough target, a vandal could acquire a bunch of zombie computers (through computer viruses or other means), and then perform a Distributed Vandalism Attack, where each infected IP address would vandalize a few random pages. With thousands and thousands of pages vandalized by thousands and thousands of different IPs, we'd have to roll back the database to before the vandalisms started, and then lock out edits long enough to change Wikimedia to be incompatible with the viruses. And then the vandal would make a new virus that would be compatible with the new Wikimedia, and it would start all over again. -- Khym Chanur 07:45, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

That has happened yet, thankfully. The theory is that our servers are so slow that they would give up and die if thousands of people tried to edit them at once. So damage to the DB would be limited. Our response time would hopefully be reasonably short -- about 20 active Wikipedians have the contact details of the developers, one of them would hopefully make the call in short order and we'd lock the DB. If we wanted to improve this system, we could put a global maximum on the edit rate. But if someone really had thousands of compromised systems at their disposal, why on earth would they attack Wikipedia with them? Taking www.whitehouse.gov down is so much more glamorous. -- Tim Starling 08:07, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia must stay open to all. The beauty of the content is that it represents the minds of all interested. Quite similar to Lincoln's GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, where he says that America is an experiment, we too are engaging in an experiment to see if wikipedia can long endure as a fully-open site. I work on content, but I also do my part in thwarting vandals. The only thing that drives me away is server-slowness. But I always come back. Kingturtle 07:27, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)


[edit] Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit pages

This is a followup to three articles on this page:

  • "We've lost another two"
  • "protecting Wikipedia"
  • "revert war"

The consequences of bias, brutishness, vandalism, and incompetence are detailed in these posts and elsewhere, and yet many of the respondents seem to ignore the costs and perils of the current policy.

  • Please don't ignore those who have given up in despair!
  • Please don't forget that there are those who have heard about "revert wars" and decided not to bother in the first place!

Some of the people who may have the most valuable content to offer the project are likely to have little inclination or time to monitor the fate of their contributions let alone engage in interminable combat. Yes, there are some protections, but these all have their own costs.

In summary, I commend to you Adam's principle: anonymous users should not be allowed to edit pages.

I don't understand why everyone equates anonymity with editing when logged out. Here is a guy simply named "Peak", with no user page, telling us all that anonymity should not be allowed. It doesn't make sense.
Nomenclature aside, will raising the barriers to entry by requiring users to spend 20 seconds creating an account prevent all vandalism? Most vandalism (certainly not all) comes from logged out users, but it doesn't follow that requiring account creation will deter those users. It's just as likely to deter the thousands of logged out users who contribute in good faith. -- Tim Starling 08:59, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
And strangely enough, Peak's first and only edit is here. My two cents, though: not having to register is vital to Wikipedia's 1) mission and 2) appeal. For no other reason, Wikipedia turns heads when casual visitors see an "Edit this page" link instead of "Register now" button. What we have now is a zero barrier to entry, and raising our shields would severely affect the character of Wikipedia and the appeal. I certainly do feel registered/logged in users should have more privileges (voting for deletion, logos, etc.) but the privilege to edit here should be extended to all. Fuzheado 09:17, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Denying editing for non logged in users is meaningless, unless we also implement checks on who we allow to create an account, and that... Phhhpt. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 09:31, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)


Sorry, no easy high-tech solutions to all the strife in the world. Wikipedia is just a reflection of real-world issues.
-- Viajero 09:44, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
There is a problem. And I think it's important for you who feel associated with wikipedia as it works now not to see in another direction. People who've got tired of wikipedia in its current state, surely will not be there when it has detoriated that much further, that even you realize it's gone too far.
I can't help thinking of dr Martin Niemöller's famous First they came...
--Ruhrjung 13:23, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
There is an old saying in science fiction fandom: "Close the doors of fandom, as soon as I get in." It isn't so long from the time that I discovered Wikipedia, that I wouldn't remember doing edits before I created a username. If I had to have signed in before editing, I honestly don't think I would have bothered. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 21:47, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
There is no problem, and Wikipedia is not deteriorating. For a site that's wide open to the world, article quality is remarkably high and conflicts are remarkably rare. People who have gotten tired of Wikipedia in its current state are welcome to leave, and we thank them for their contributions. I find Niemöller's quote that deals with Nazi crimes tastelessly out of place. AxelBoldt 15:32, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think there are things to address, but whether we call them problems or opportunities is a matter of mindset. In particular, there are current suggestions and attempts to improve the reception given to new contributors, the quality of articles generally, and the efficiency of our processes.
I think there's room for progress in all of these, but I also think our approach at this stage should be evolutionary, not radical. A complete change in core policy such as this suggestion is not to be taken lightly. Andrewa 20:05, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC) above
People do not leave over vandalism, they leave over fights and edit wars, sometimes over simply bad edits. I have thought about leaving myself several times, and actually have done it (though getting back in two weeks or so), but none of those was because of an anonymous editor. Let's not try to fight the fire in the backyard by mowing the grass in front. Andre Engels 16:38, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

We allow edits from anonymous contributors because we assume good faith, and we know that logins are evil. Martin 21:22, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Let me share a secret with you all. The most effective way to solve a revert-war is to walk away from it. Don't go back to it for a week or two. The world will not implode if what you see as incorrect content sits there for a while. You can always go back in a few weeks and make the changes you see fit. Relax. There are 100s of wonderful people here who love wikipedia as you do. It will all work out in the end. Just learn to walk away from the article and come back much later. Your head will be clear. And the dust will be settled. Kingturtle 07:39, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Measuring Disputes

After a week of observing serious concerns on Village Pump -- "Wikipedia needs an editor", "We've lost another two", "protecting Wikipedia", NPOV disputes, epidemic personal attacks, and the like -- I wanted to find out how well perception stood up to the statistics. What I found was a real surprise. Searching through all articles for Wikipedia:NPOV_dispute warnings, care to guess how many articles came back? With 160,000+ articles in EN, I was thinking hundreds if not thousands were in dispute, but the actual number was 89. (September 20, 2003 database dump, with recent dumps about the same). That's 0.06% of pages being NPOV disputed. Of those 89 articles, 30 are related to Israel-Palestine or Jewish-Muslim issues. See User:Fuzheado/metrics for the actual list.

Granted, not all hotly debated articles have an "NPOV dispute" notice at the top, but with my guess being an order of magnitude (or two) WAY OFF is telling. Even if we are generous and say there are 10 times as many articles that are "hot button" and are not labeled "NPOV dispute" that's still only 0.6% of articles. A very small number of articles are creating headaches and bad blood. It seems to not be an 80-20 rule but a 99-1 rule. Just something to keep in perspective as we propose massive policy changes that may drastically change the face of Wikipedia. Fuzheado 10:09, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes, Fuzheado makes a fair point. I have contributed or done major edits on about 120 articles, of which only four or five have led to serious POV or factual disputes: Vergina (with a Greek nationlist), History of Poland (1939-1945) (Polish ditto), Adolf Hitler (highly-opinionated persons of all kinds), Jesus Christ and Mother Teresa (Christians), China and the United Nations (the irrepressible Jiang). I think that rule probably applies across the board - 90 or 95% of all articles are not controversial and are rarely if ever edited by anyone other than their author. Even my rewrite of Maoism hasn't stirred any feathers (and I did try).
But the problem is with the remaining 5%, which deal with big, conceptual, hot-button issues, on which consensus will never be reached: abortion, Zionism, terrorism, Dubya, etc. These articles will go on being editted and counter editted forever. Does that matter? Well if WP ever wants to be taken seriously as an encyclopaedia, eventually it will have to have a respectable, settled text on these issues. No-one is going to use or cite an encyclopaedia where every time they look up a controversial subject they find an ill-written spawling jumble of contradictory statements which changes every five minutes.
Just some thoughts :) Adam 12:45, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Question to Fuzheado: does your query also give some clue as to the number of Users who are creating all the alarums and havoc? Phil 17:35, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
Good question. I only only been using the articles database, and have no access to user names. That's something the developers might be able to provide statistics on. Fuzheado 00:29, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Good observations, Fuzheado, and thoughts, Adam. Here's my lateral thinking... the respectability you suggest and the joyful anarchy we currently have are not mutually exclusive. IMO our current software and culture are both almost sufficient to support both similtaneously. I have a suggestion at m:referees which is just one way in which we could try to introduce a form of baselining without disrupting the current culture. Interested in others. Andrewa 20:16, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think people are confusing two different projects:
1) The current Wikipedia that is being created now. The dynamic project that anyone can edit, and is liable to mischief and bad edits; but in the long run inevitably improves.
2) A 'trusted' wikipedia which has been okayed by referees/reviewers as at least meeting a minimum standard for its pages. This will be a static snapshot of the wikipedia perhaps on a yearly basis. This will requires its own location on the internet, and will take approved pages from the dynamic site. These pages will remain frozen until the next yearly? update from the dynamic site. This site will probably have fewer pages and will be exactly like a traditional encyclopedia.
What we have here is Wikipedia. The 'trusted' wikipedia is a different project, which requires a slightly different approach. As I see it this will evolve naturally out of the desire to create an CD version of Wikipedia or Wikipedia 1.0 for release. The information on this CD whenever it is created could be put on its own site. And then updated with each publication of the CD. It requires its own site so internet users can bookmark and know they are going to get safe information. Wikipedia references the latest page obviously.
Corporate organisations and people who have an issue with our dynamic Wikipedia will use this static snapshot, and only refer to the dynamic Wikipedia if they need the updated info. Indeed some people will only be aware of the static Wikipedia, unaware that any mad and crazy dynamic Wikipedia exists.
Having such a set up would deter vandalism, because they would only be very temporarily defacing what is from one perspective only an unofficial 'test' site. :ChrisG 21:51, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)



[edit] using Wikipedia content

Hello, I know that this question has probably been asked before. But I want to make sure that I have a good grasp on the copyright issues associated with using Wikipedia material. I am thinking of building a site with commercial interests ( in other words I want to sell things ). I would also probably right my own articles about various topics. If I set up links to Wikipedia articles throughout the site where appropriate, would I be violating the copyright? Can I have the Wikipedia material as part of a webpage on my site? And do I have to make all of the material on my website belong to the same licensing structure? I want to do the right thing and I apreciate your patience and help. RW

You can link to Wikipedia articles anywhere without any problems, and we're happy about it. You can use Wikipedia material on your site if you acknowledge Wikipedia as the source, provide a link back to our article, and keep the material under GFDL, including your additions/modifications. If you do that, only the material on your site that can be seen as "derivative works" of our articles has to be under GFDL; you can continue to license your separate materials under any license you want. AxelBoldt 12:15, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)


[edit] wikipedia deeper

what you think wikipedia may contain every piece of information on this planet or not? i think it must be deeper and parental control must be included.

No, wikipedia should not contain every piece of information on the planet, a significant proportion of it is reserved for our sister projects: Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc. See WP:WWIN. Parental controls have been previously suggested. I think most of the discussion was on the mailing lists -- see for example wikien-l in early June 2003. -- Tim Starling
I absolutely oppose parental controls. Are we going to limit what is contained in Wikipedia, or the parts of Wikipedia people are able to access, to what some people think is appropriate for children to see or read? --Daniel C. Boyer 19:00, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Because some Wikipedians insist on chronicling even the most sickening human practices, like Fisting, treating these subjects like they're actually important and legitimate (when in fact they are valueless, and just degrade people), Wikipedia should have a big warning on it that some content is unsuitable for children and encourage parents to control a child's access. Paul Klenk 20:13, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Fisting may be a repulsive concept, but people in consensual adult relationships do it, so obviously wikipedia has to cover it. Personally I find anti-semitism, homophobia, child sex-abuse, rascism, fascism and many heterosexual sex acts repulsive, but however much they may repulse me, if they exist then an encyclopædia should chronicle them. You may fisting "valueness" and degrading; I may indeed agree with you. But that is expressing a POV, and wikipedia is all about providing an NPOV, even on things that turn our stomachs (in my case, George W. Bush's rape of the english language, like now announcing that his National Security Advisor's job is to be an 'unstickler', whatever the hell that means!). FearÉIREANN 22:00, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The point is, there should be a parental warning, letting them know that "Wikipedia, having a strict NPOV policy, has decided to use that as an excuse to abandon the idea that even the most basic values of human decency have any place in an encyclopedia. In fact, we have to, have to, have to, include everything. Anything goes, as long as its NPOV. Of course, our strict NPOV policy logically (don't ask us how) dictates that we cannot even categorize any content as adult or unsuitable for children. Therefore, before you let your children freely browse random pages, be aware that they may inadvertantly read articles about fascism or fisting. If you don't know what fascism or fisting is, perhaps you can ask one of your children to read the articles as a homework assignment, and explain the concepts to you." Paul Klenk 06:16, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Would you mind awfully not trolling us? Thanks. Martin 21:14, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
. . . having a strict NPOV policy, has decided to use that as an excuse to abandon the idea that even the most basic values of human decency have any place in an encyclopedia . . . I think we can all see Paul Klenk's agenda here. And it certainly isn't encyclopædic, more 'don't offend my opinions'. Some might class them prejudices. FearÉIREANN 21:33, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hmmmm, I thought that NPOV only applied to within an article, and not to which articles. I thought that including everything-including-the-kitchen-sink was more of a "mission statement" type thing. -- Khym Chanur 09:21, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

I've found some more discussion, see Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. Perhaps this thread can be moved to Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer. -- Tim Starling 01:43, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with labeling (like RACS), giving a rating to each page, so existing parental controls could work with it (though it might be technically difficult to start adding meta-info to each page). We could also do like then Open Directory Project does: their "Adult" subtree isn't reachable from rest of the directory, unless you enter "Adult terms into a search. So there could be an "adult.en.wikipedia.org". If the database could identify some things as "Adult", it might encourage others to copy and use the database, since they could simply pluck out the parts they don't like (this is a large reason the ODP has an Adult subtree, so people won't be afraid to copy and use their database).

As for things like facism, we'd need to use a much more complex and flexible labeling system than RACS, since that only covers violence, nudity, sex, and language. (SafeSurf also includes bigotry, and divides "sex" into heterosexual and homosexual) Also, Encyclopædia Britannica includes articles on facism, the Holocaust, and such, so I wasn't aware that these might be controversial articles to include in an encyclopedia, nor was I aware of the existence of "child friendly" encyclopedias that excluded disturbing subjects. -- Khym Chanur 09:21, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

"Fisting" might be offensive to some, but in wikipedia, one can really only read about it if you go looking for it. We don't have Winnie the Pooh redirecting to Fisting. We don't have beaver redirecting to vagina. We don't have toys redirecting to dildoes. Wikipedia is designed to help you find what you're looking for; we don't play tricks. This is an encyclopedia. We provide information. Guess what. Fisting takes place. And our article on fisting is academically written.
I put up a big fight with the shock site article. I wanted more warning to the reader. It isn't perfect now (imho), but it works well enough to warn the reader. And others have agreed to place warnings where appropriate.
Wikipedians take great pride in this encyclopedia. We work very hard at being fair, and being honest, and being comprehensive. We try to remove POV whenever possible. A rating system would be extremely POV.
With that said, we don't have parent controls and we should never have such controls. Parents *are* the control. Parents need to supervise their kids during internet time. And parents should be grateful that this site takes such care in being honest. We do not trick users into seeing things they are not looking for. Kingturtle 07:58, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Consider creating a Wikipedia:Category schemes as a children friendly catalog. Actually, a friend just asked the other day about a good childrens' encyclopedia, so some combination of Simple Wikipedia] and a category scheme might fit the bill. Fuzheado 08:05, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] "new messages" message

I can't get rid of the "You have new messages" message. When I go to my page, it goes away, but when I leave it for another page, it's still there, even if there are no new messages since the last time I went to my Talk page. I've tried Refresh, and that doesn't help. RickK 05:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Also happening to Angela and Cimon Avaro but not to Dysprosia or Delirium. submitted to Sourceforge. Ctrl-f5 doesn't help.
Haven't quite figured it out yet, but it appears to be intermittent. Angela's ISP seems to have an oddity where some requests are proxied and some aren't, but I don't think this is directly related. --Brion 08:57, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)


[edit] slowwwwwww tonight

wikipedia is sooooo slow tonight. i just had to vent for a moment. it is really frustrating. and can get demoralizing sometimes. alas. Kingturtle 11:51, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

All night I've been averaging between 20 and 30 seconds per edit. Sigh. Kingturtle 11:55, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
We're in the ugly part of the queueing delay curve. We're about to double our hardware, but hopefully that will increase speed by far more than a factor of two. -- Tim Starling 14:30, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)

When exactly will the new hardware be working? G-Man 19:37, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

When it's built and delivered and installed. Unfortunately we're in the dark on this; I only know what Jimbo says when I bug him for more info. Hopefully it should be set up within a week or so, but I'm just making up numbers here with little basis in known facts. --Brion 22:36, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)